Chapter Text
"I know you're not trying to get out of bed right now." The stupidly righteous, barely amused voice of Clark was usually a secretly welcome distraction, but in the past three weeks, there was nothing Bruce wanted to hear less.
"I'm fine," Bruce grunted, going to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. He'd had to talk Lee, Alfred, Selina, Clark, Lois, and Diana into letting the family go back to the Manor the minute Jason and Tim's mandatory holds were over, but it was still a fight—a full-on screaming match that had his ribs straining and Clark flying off to the Fortress for forty-eight hours—that had some...unexpected side effects. Well, effects he should have been cognizant of if he hadn't been out of his mind with adrenaline and fear and the pain medicine.
"Your ribs are still cracked in four places," Clark retorted, and Bruce ignored the burst of air that sounded as he flew across the room, one hand firmly planting itself on Bruce's chest. Lightly enough to not crack his ribs further but with enough super-strength behind it that he was pinned to the bed. "You don't need X-ray vision to know that you're not fine."
"I'm fine."
It had been four hours and thirty-six minutes since he'd last seen the kids, and even though it was the middle of the night, it wasn't like he had been getting much sleep anyway. The pain wasn't much of an issue; it was more the lying flat as a board without moving that was the problem. Even with his physical therapy plan, Lee insisted he rested frequently to make sure his muscles built up correctly and he didn't tear anything by training "too hard." But forcing himself to be motionless invited too many thoughts and scenarios into his mind that left him staring at the ceiling, contemplating the merits of potentially pulling a stitch just to make the rounds and then down to the Cave to plan.
(Being abducted as the Waynes was always a likely possibility, there was a high chance some criminal enterprise would want the payday that would come with ransoming one or multiple of his children to him. It was supposed to be easy. Just sit tight, act the victim, play up how much pain and/or discomfort you were in, and wait for the rest of the family or the League to come.)
(Waiting eight months wasn't in any of his plans.)
Clark's face softened, the flash of guilt reappeared on his face that had been ever-present since Bruce woke up in the Watchtower's med bay with one son in a cast, one in restraints, his daughter terrified and silent again, and his other two children beat to tell and hooked up to machines. Bruce hadn't asked what it had been like for him and Lois during those eight months, frankly, he didn't want to know. Coming back to find out Selina had moved back to her penthouse in the Diamond District was bad enough.
Jon would've been a wreck if he knew, knowing how close the youngest Kent was to Damian. Kon probably MIA or an unpredictable ball of rage.
It wasn't Clark's fault he couldn't see through lead.
"The kids are okay," Clark said gently, his hand softening but Bruce didn't have any energy left to get up and the both of them knew that. "Relatively, I mean."
Everything would be relative until the six of them healed up and were able to figure out who the hell had done this to them. Bruce had been cataloguing every identifying marker on every person they encountered in that hellhole—languages, clothing, tattoos, piercings—and if he hadn't been knocked unconscious during the abduction, he would've been trying to keep track of the navigation. As it was, a blurry picture was coming together, and he knew that all the kids would have been doing something similar, Tim probably already had a whole psychological profile on their abductors.
But for now, there was nothing he could do but sit in this fucking bed, do his exercises for two hours, and hope Alfred and Clark brought one of his kids in to see him at some point during the day. And at night...
"Damian had a nightmare fifteen minutes ago," Clark started, Bruce's heart immediately jumping in his throat.
That was exactly why he needed to be able to check on everyone. His baby spent eight months being tortured to break his brothers (and Bruce) and now was sleeping in a cold, drafty manor without even his pets for company. At least on the Watchtower the six of them could all be in the same room at the same time, and Bruce could see when one of his kids was struggling.
"Let me go, Clark," he growled in warning, but the Kryptonian was not one to be moved if he did not want to be.
"He's fine," the other man said in the same tone he usually used to calm the animals on the Kents' farm or a jumper on the edge of a building.
"You don't know that," he argued, even though he knew he was being petulant and childish. If there was something truly wrong with Damian, there was no way the Kryptonian was going to be with Bruce right now, instead sitting with Bruce's youngest even if the prickly teenager wouldn't allow him in the room.
"I do," Clark said without a hint of arrogance, and his super-hearing had to be good for something. "He snuck out to get Alfred the Cat and Titus, and he's curled up with them now. His breathing is normal, he fell back asleep."
The urge to go find his son and make sure he wasn't aggravating the sutures on his back was strong, but he accepted that at least Damian had some comfort. He was only thirteen and although he liked to believe his League of Assassins training made him older, more mature or able to handle things his older sibling's couldn't, he was still just a traumatized child. Bruce got the feeling that he hadn't liked that reminder for the past eight months.
"The others?" He bit out, forcing himself to rely on Clark's super-senses if the man himself wasn't going to let him check.
With a soft smile, seemingly a thank you for not fighting him anymore, Clark sat down on the edge of the bed, although Bruce glared at the space between them with a hot, sickly feeling twisting in his chest. The expression that flickered over Clark's handsome face, turning down his mouth and forming a crease in between his eyebrows, didn't mean anything good either.
"Cass is in the attic," he started, still talking softly, "she's a little restless but sleeping."
That was good. Even if she had moved to the attic—the place she always runs to whenever she needs to hide herself away—at least she was sleeping. He wasn't sure how much of that she actually got when they were abducted.
"Jason is...back. Now."
"What do you mean 'now'?" Bruce growled. If one of his kids escaped under Clark's watch, he was sending the Kryptonian back to Metropolis and reinforcing the "no caped metas in Gotham" rule again. No exceptions.
"He told Alfred that he needed to stretch his legs," Clark gentled like that made it any better. One of his kids wasn't in the Manor and he didn't know about it. "I think he was going a little stir-crazy, but he's fine."
Bruce snorted, because that was highly unlikely. Jason voluntarily staying at the Manor when he didn't technically have to was a rarity in itself, and it was only because Cass and Tim were in such bad shape that his second eldest even considered it in the first place. And returning when he had free roam of the city was never a good sign.
"I tried to keep an ear out," Clark snapped, a little harsher than he was known for, "but you trained these kids to hide their heartbeats. It's a little difficult. But I caught a glimpse of him as he was coming back in, he seems...in one piece. The withdrawal symptoms...you know it triggered the Pit."
"So you let him sneak out and beat on some random thugs?" He spat with acid. Clark was supposed tot be the moral center of whatever the fuck all of them had been doing. "Is that what you want Conner to do when he gets into one of his fits?"
And Clark's face hardened, the air temperature in the room dropping several degrees, like just merely disappointing the Big Blue Boy Scout had a physical consequence. (With his freeze-breath, Bruce wasn't sure that it wasn't a plausible conclusion.) "I'm not answering that, Bruce."
"Typical," he muttered, knowing that he was pushing Clark away, just as he had in that fight with Selina the second he woke up. "Just tell me where the fuck my other two kids are."
Clark's diamond-cut jaw clenched and he looked away, and when he spoke there was an unknown emotion clogging his voice. "Tim's at Drake Manor and Dick is out."
"Leave."
"Bruce," Clark huffed, trying to keep himself calm but Bruce could not care less in the moment. This was why he didn't trust anyone with his kids except Alfred, of course, and maybe Selina although he was going to have to revise that stance now. He was not going to be making that mistake again.
"Get out of my city, Superman," Bruce said coldly, and he knew the words landed when Clark straightened up, hovering a few inches above the ground. It looked a little absurd in his plaid shirt and sweatpants, his hair a curly mess and glasses off, somewhere in between Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, and just Clark from Smallville, but Bruce couldn't afford to care about the distinction right now.
"Did you ever think the kids are doing the exact same thing you are right now?" Clark asked sharply, still floating ominously, silhouetted by the moon outside the window. "Running away because they need space? Because they're scared and hurt and don't know how to be?"
Bruce didn't—couldn't—look at him, just turning away and locking his jaw to keep the words contained as he heard Clark fly out the window. There was probably a low chance that he would actually leave Gotham—Lois was still with Jon at the farm—but he hoped that he would at least give Bruce the city limits.
He waited another half hour to make sure Clark wasn't coming back, and then another fifteen minutes to gather the strength necessary to limp his way down to the Cave. It was time to figure out where three of his five children had been in the five hours since he'd last seen them.
(Where Dick still was.)
The pain radiating from his chest caused a cold sweat to break out over his skin, even as the air in the Manor had goosebumps rising on the skin of his bare chest. The low-slung sweatpants that passed as pajamas barely protected his legs from the chill, but the bandages wrapped around his chest were all that he could tolerate on his abdomen right now.
Gritting his teeth, he made his way down the staircase, his knuckles white where they clutched onto the mahogany railing. Every step was agony, the muscles in his legs were going to take months to build back up, eight months being strapped to a chair did an effective job at removing all the strength he'd had. Between the atrophy and his ribs, not wanting to strain his body was the reason why he was confided to bed rest while the majority of his children were allowed to roam freely. Tim, even with his broken leg, had more mobility than Bruce did right now.
A light was on in the kitchen, meaning that Alfred was still awake for some reason, even as it was well past the time patrol would be over.
Bruce had learned a long time ago that it was difficult to pull one over on Alfred, but not impossible. So he just kept his steps light as he crept past the open kitchen door. He was Batman, after all, this should be child's play for him.
"I hope that is not you lurking in the hallway, Master Bruce," Alfred's brusque voice stopped him in his tracks. And suddenly Bruce was fourteen years old again, getting caught in the library at midnight because he would rather study the movements of Penguin's and Falcone's shipments instead of sleeping.
"I'm fine, Alfred," Bruce said, limping into the kitchen, knowing there was no way out of this.
"You most certainly are not," Alfred rolled his eyes, taking Bruce's arm and helping him into a chair, before turning to bustle around the kitchen, fixing another cup of tea. The butler was wrapped in his housecoat which meant he could not sleep either and had been making himself a kettle of peppermint tea to help him sleep. An old trick that he had sworn by since Bruce was young, but one that never worked on Bruce himself no matter how much Alfred wanted it to. "I thought I heard Master Clark earlier, I would have hoped he would convince you to rest for a little longer."
"Do you know where Dick and Jason were tonight?" Bruce fired back in lieu of an answer.
"No," Alfred said with frightening nonchalance. "But as you are well aware, both Dick and Jason are their own men. They do not have to tell us where they are going."
"I think a little transparency would be a given after...after what happened," Bruce said, his voice coming out cold and harsh. "They promised they would stay."
"They promised they would stay int eh Manor, that does not mean they do not have the free will to come and go as they please," Alfred corrected gently. "And when it comes to communicative transparency, maybe you should begin with yourself before expecting it of your children. Your grown children."
"You weren't there, Alfred." And that was the crux of the matter. No one. Not Clark, not Selina, not Alfred, not Jim, no one had been in that bunker with the six of them. For eight months, Bruce only had eyes on three of his children, and only to watch them be hurt and tortured in the most sadistic ways for seemingly no reason. Cass and Tim had been separated almost immediately, and he only saw them again the night the six of them escaped.
The only reason he knew they hadn't been killed already was that Dick traded favors to see his siblings and reported back in whispered tones, his eyes haunted.
"No, I was not," Alfred's voice was as emotional as the stoic butler got, the tone fluctuating but there was the sharp sting of pain underneath it all. "Only the six of you were, but that does not mean we do not care or that we do not want to know. We just want to help, and when you are ready to talk about it, we will be here for you."
Bruce didn't reply, unsure how he would ever find the courage to say, 'I failed my children for eight months straight. I watched them be beaten, burned, whipped, injected, and tormented while I sat tied to a chair. And those were only the three that I could see. I had to let my oldest son be raped so that I could know what was going on with the other two. And now that we're home, I cannot help but think that when they are out of my sight, horrible things will happen again. I don't know how I'm going to let them back on the streets at night.'
Because everyone knew Bruce was one of the biggest cowards in Gotham and he would hide behind his reputation and the Bat as much as he needed to in order to keep his family safe. They could hate him all they wanted, but they would be alive.
Alfred sighed, the one person who understood Bruce's silence more than anyone else, even Selina or Lois. Clark was good at reading his expression and his pauses in conversation, but he always found too much good there.
"Tim left at eleven for Drake Manor, citing the need to be alone to focus on a case, but he promised to be home for breakfast," Alfred explained, looking out the window that faced the backyard, the one that spanned the several miles to the long-since abandoned Drake Manor. "Jason made sure to check in with me before he left and when he returned."
"And Dick?" Bruce asked in a strangled voice. Because Jason fleeing the mansion wasn't unusual and although Tim going back to that lonely, empty place was concerning, he was coming back. Dick was the one no one could seem to get a read on recently. He'd been flighty since the six of them woke up on the Watchtower, only Damian's tearful pleading had kept him in the med bay for the full seventy-two hours. He wouldn't even let Zatanna see him.
With another sigh, Alfred sat down across from him, his face cracked in a painful expression. "Miss Zatara visited me every week for eight months. Every Saturday she would come and sit with me while we ate supper, reading her spellbooks while I finished the crossword puzzle. Sometimes she would go up to Master Dick's room and stay the night, and on those nights, I made sure to check on her before I turned in, and she would be crying quietly. Pleading to Doctor Fate to bring you all back. Wishing to trade her powers or her life for just one of you to return."
Bruce looked away, forcing the emotion back down. "What does this have to do with where Dick is?" He demanded, not needing to know what their abduction had done to their loved ones. Selina had made that clear enough.
"Because one day she came to the Manor with an engagement ring on her finger," Alfred stated plainly. "She said that she had found it among Master Dick's things in their apartment...along with the wedding bands from her parents. The ring had belonged to Mary Grayson, and she was honored to wear it. To be Dick's fiancée no matter where he was."
"You think he went to visit her?" Bruce asked even though that made no sense. If he was staying in his apartment with Zatanna, it was almost certain that he would tell Alfred or Clark at the very least where he was going.
"Miss Zatara still visits me, you know," Alfred said in response. "Every Saturday since you have returned, and the first Saturday, exactly five days after the six of you returned to us, she was no longer wearing the ring."
Bruce nodded in understanding, his heart squeezing in his chest, and he felt the urge to run a thumb over his own bare left hand. Like father, like son.
Self-destruction was never Dick's MO, not in such an obvious way at least. Running himself into the ground to keep their incredibly dysfunctional family together or to be everything to everyone, certainly, but not...denial.
"Do you think he'll be back?" Bruce asked, letting the uncertainty cloud his voice for the briefest of moments.
"I don't know, Bruce," Alfred replied, and the pit in his stomach swallowed a little bit more of his soul. "I believe if you had the capability of running far away from Miss Kyle at this moment, you would do so. Instead, you settled for forcing her and Master Clark to leave."
"Dick isn't me," he countered even if the words tasted like a lie. Him and Dick were vastly different in a number of ways that were immediately obvious to anyone who had been in their presence for more than five minutes, but they were more alike than he wanted to admit. Dick was stubborn, quick to anger, and had a mean streak he wished he didn't. All things he had learned at Bruce's knee when he was just a child with no parents and a thirst for vengeance.
"No, but he is not the perfect son you wish him to be sometimes. He breaks just as easily as all the others."
"I know that," Bruce replied sharply, although he wasn't sure that he did. If he knew how fragile Dick could be, would he have let what happened in that cell happen? He was Batman, with contingency plans on top of contingency plans, he could have thought his way out of the problem without standing by as his son offered himself to his captors.
"He will return by the morning to keep his siblings' peace of mind," Alfred said with such certainty that Bruce was made painfully aware this was not the first time that Dick had snuck out and he had no idea.
Maybe, but what's he going to be like when he's back? Bruce thought, taking a pointless sip of the peppermint tea Alfred sat down in front of him.
"I plan on waiting for him until he does," Alfred explained unnecessarily. "And while I would stress that you get some rest, I have the feeling that is going to be a fruitless endeavor."
"You would be correct," Bruce tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace.
"Then let us move this to the sitting room, I do not believe these chairs are going to do anything good for your ribs."
...
It was important to get as much sleep as you could when you were being strung up and tortured at random intervals every day. Bruce hated closing his eyes, the ear kicking in his chest that when he opened them again, the lifeless eyes of one of his children would be staring back up at him. That the next time he saw Cass or Tim, they wouldn't be alive.
But he knew that he could not be awake for every hour of the day without serious repercussions to his health. And he couldn't help his children, couldn't save them, couldn't find his way to the surface and call for Clark—big-hearted, beautiful, effortlessly kind Clark who was probably running himself ragged trying to search the world for them and be the hero of the whole Earth that he was—if he was falling over from exhaustion.
And even if the miniscule amount of rest he got was the bare minimum he needed to function, nothing that meant he was truly rested, he still tried to take advantage of the time their abductors left them alone and encourage his sons to do the same.
Damian was wavering, putting on a brave face for his brothers, but Bruce could tell his mind was beginning to fracture. All the Shadows training in the world was useless when you were being used as a bargaining chip against the people you loved.
Dick was enduring the torment as well as he could, having been in the game for so long, Bruce was certain this was not the first time he'd been tortured to this extent. What was concerning was his behavior towards the guards. Flirtatious and inviting and skin-crawlingly blasé.
Jason needed to sleep more than anyone. The cocktail of drugs they were pumping him with every other day—the sunlight coming from the small windows high in their cells was the only indication of the passage of time—was doing a number on his body. The fights even more so.
The sound of keys in a cell door sent his heart racing and his head snapping up. It was only by sheer force of will that he kept his heartbeat and breathing steady. Cold sweat dripped down his back, ruining the already destroyed dress shirt and pants he'd been living in for the past few months or so. Keys in the lock could either mean a fresh wave of hurt and pain awaiting the four of them, or something darker: the return of one of his sons.
Although lifting his head was an effort, Bruce was able to watch as Dick stumbled into the cell across the hall from Bruce's. The guards had shoved him, the ski masks long-since abandoned and shoved in their pockets, faces flushed as they laughed with each other.
Dick's shirt—a standard gray t-shirt with all the identifying tags and markers removed, the same as what all of the kids had been forced into within the first few hours of their abduction—was rumpled, stretched out over his collarbone, revealing dark shadows on his unnaturally pale skin. His hair was similarly a mess, as if someone had run their hands through it, and the dark shadows under his eyes were starting to look more permanent than they usually were.
His ears still felt like they were stuffed with cotton from the last time he was hit in the head, so the guards' parting shot to Dick was lost, but the brief twist of Dick's face before smoothing out into his usual affable smile told him all he needed to.
It was the day after one of Jason's fights so his second oldest was shivering on the floor, his eyes shifting behind his closed eyelids as he was stuck in a restless sleep neither of them could reach. He didn't register Dick entering, even if the shakes still slightly as Dick ran his hand through Jason's hair, smoothing the white streak off of his sweaty forehead, but Damian shot up from where he had been curled against Jason's side.
"Where did you go?" Damian demanded, his usual imperious tone nowhere to be found, the shakiness only exacerbated by the way his voice had started to crack even before they were abducted.
"Nowhere, Dami," Dick lied flawlessly, no one other than Bruce or maybe one of his siblings (when they were less traumatized) would be able to tell. "I'm back, it's okay."
He continued to mutter soothing nonsense as Damian collapsed onto his lap, Dick's hands coming up to wrap around the youngest's shoulders, rubbing his back comfortingly. The boy always refused to sleep while Dick was...gone, but thankfully, once the oldest would return, his energy gave out and he allowed himself to sleep.
It wasn't too long before Dick was finally looking up and meeting Bruce's eyes for the first time since he was brought back in. Or as much as he could seem to muster these days, always staring just to the side of Bruce's face or the bridge of his nose.
"What happened?" He croaked out, the words 'mission report' on the tip of his tongue every time they did this.
Dick was more of a partner than his son most of the time, he had been ever since he first put on the Robin costume and even more so once Bruce took it away. He hadn't lived at home since he was sixteen and Bruce knew it was only because of Cass, Tim, and Damian that he spent as much time at the Manor as he did.
And Bruce might not have been a great father in many aspects, he wasn't sure Dick would ever be able to look past his lack of adoption papers, but Bruce had tried to keep him safe the only way he knew how. Especially from the specific horror he was throwing himself headfirst into, the one Bruce tried to keep all his children from knowing on an intimate level. He hated having hands on his body most of the time, when they were unwanted and unwantedly intimate it made his skin crawl and stomach turn.
"Tim and Cass are the same," Dick said, his emotions barely constrained by the quiet tone—a necessity for his sleeping brothers—one hand cradling Damian close, the other going back to combing through Jason's hair. "No broken bones, no concussions. No one has...touched them."
Not like they have you, Bruce thought with an aching sadness in his chest. If he was a better father, he would offer himself up in Dick's place. Find some other solution, bargain with whatever he could to get Tim and Cass brought back to this cell. A least if they were all together, they might get through this.
But no, he felt the weight of his vows to Selina in his chest, how Clark touched him in a wave of sunlight, of Lois' biting tongue and sharp smile. They would all understand, of course they would, but Bruce wouldn't. He wouldn't survive something like that again, and Dick...Bruce saw the determination in his eyes, the spark of anger that faded every time he talked to one of the guards in that tone that only had one result.
"You don't have to—" Bruce started, the same plea he always made when Dick returned. There had to be another way to buy knowledge about Cass and Tim—the twins as Dick always called them.
"You know I do." Dick bit back harshly, his hand stilling in Jason's hair for a brief moment, "You see how they look at me, besides I'm...easy. This way they don't look at Cass or Tim or, god forbid, Dami like that."
It doesn't make it any easier to watch, Bruce held back the words, knowing that Dick didn't want to hear them.
"And Za—"
"Don't," Dick actually met Bruce's eyes dead-on, his blue eyes blazing and alive. "Don't even think her name and don't you dare say it to me."
Bruce nodded gently, wishing he could be in that stupid cage with his sons. There was nothing worse than feeling useless and he was sitting back and watching Dick self-destruct because thought there was only one way to help the twins. And while Selina and Clark and Lois were the only things keeping him sane in this hellhole, he wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't exactly true for Dick. He'd already been hiding something when it came to Zatanna before they had been captured, but he'd seemed just as in love as ever. The only reason she hadn't been at the fateful gala was because she had a last minute "show" (League business in Hell with Constantine and Deadman).
"I'm handling...it fine," Dick continued, filling the silence left by Bruce's lack of comfort. He was always the talker of the family, but his voice was strained and hoarse for reasons Bruce was having a difficult time rationalizing to himself. "I'm hoping that if I can get an...in with Miss Priss, she might let me see one of Jason's fights."
The woman the four of them had dupped 'Miss Priss' was maybe fifteen years older than Dick with a severe demeanor, not wholly unattractive, but she would observe the torture sessions at times, always dressed in an expensive cream pantsuit never stained with so much as a single drop of blood. Her accent placed her upbringing in an upper-class British household but just so slightly, she hadn't been back there in years, so it was unlikely they were overseas. Bruce assumed she was some lieutenant to whoever ordered their capture and interrogation.
It wasn't a bad plan on the surface, she could have information about the operation, where they were, what the plans were, what their captors were after—it had been weeks, maybe a month, and they had barely been asked any questions. It was just...
"Are you sure you can handle that?" Bruce asked, going for reassuring, but the steely resolve in Dick's eyes meant that he took it in another direction.
"We need to know what they have Jason doing." Dick was firm, leaving no room for argument. "He doesn't remember what he's doing, someone needs to be there to know if...to know."
If they're forcing him to kill, Bruce finished. The thought had been flickering at the edges of his mind for weeks now, ever since Jason woke from the drug-induced stupor for the first time and admitted with a long-since forgotten waver in his voice that he didn't remember what he had done. That first time, he could remember the walk to the ring and deduce that they were making him fight, that they had injected him with something that increased his aggression and suppressed the regulation of his strength and inhibitions, but then it became spotty.
With every subsequent fight, Jason took longer to wake up and the blank spots in his memory were getting larger. Now, he was losing time from ours before he was injected with the stimulant they gave him. It was not sustainable, and Bruce had been thinking they needed eyes on Jason from the beginning.
"When we get out of here, he needs to have that reassurance," Dick continued, looking down at his unconscious brother sadly. "I can give him that."
"For a price," Bruce couldn't help but point out. Nothing in captivity came for free.
Dick just shrugged, a cocky smile plastered on his lips, but the deadened look to his eyes shocked Bruce to his core. "It's a good thing everyone already knows my type is redheads. Just have to close my eyes and think of Gotham, right?"
If they were in Gotham, Blüdhaven, anywhere but this small underground jail staffed by sadists with no clear motive, Bruce wouldn't even be considering this as a viable plan of action. But he's long since learned that there are no circumstances that wouldn't force even the best of men to bend their morals. Even Clark—infallible, noble, good Clark—would kill as a last resort if it saved innocent lives. He had killed Doomsday with his last breath to save the world. And when Conner first revealed himself, he turned his back on the clone, appalled by Lex and violated to his core.
But even imperfect Clark would find a way around this. Even under the influence of Kryptonite or a red sun, he would never be so desperate to send Kara or Conner on such a perverse mission.
It was a good thing that Bruce never claimed to be as righteous as Superman.
"You're being safe?" He asked, unable to keep the irrational sentence from slipping past his lips.
Sure enough, Dick just snorted, pulling Damian closer and lowering his head so that his nose was buried int he mess of Damian's hair, his eyes closing for the briefest moment. "I haven't gotten an infection yet."
It was hardly sustainable, and Bruce would reserve the right as a father (figure, damn those adoption papers that always seemed so difficult to sign, to give) to worry about Dick, no matter what. He was tied to this fucking chair and there was nothing he could do to save his eldest son, so what else was there to do?
...
Waiting for Dick to return was a test of Bruce's patience like he hadn't had since the early days of his training with the League of Assassins. Alfred was good company as always, and the inability to move out of the comfortable chair in the family sitting room was likely good for his healing ribs, his mind running in a thousand different directions.
Gotham's underworld was being held together by a thread because of the Sirens and Birds of Prey (and apparently the occasional appearance of Clark in an old Batsuit), and while there might be no active Rogue breakouts recently, that didn't mean there was no danger in the city.
Alfred had dozed off an hour ago, leaving Bruce's spinning thoughts to run rampant unchecked. Oracle would be keeping an eye on him, but even if Clark couldn't (or wouldn't) find his heartbeat, Barbara could miss him on her monitors. Selina would always look after her "kittens," but she was likely busy with aforementioned Gotham.
If Dick was planning on coming back to the Manor, he wouldn't have hopped on a train to Blüd or Central City...but he could have zeta'd there. Bruce should check the logs to make sure Dick hadn't made it out of the city. In fact, he was wondering if the benefits of subdermal trackers for the family would outweigh the privacy concerns after these last eight months.
Bruce is pretty sure if he could get Lois on his side (a stretch, but doable), he might be able to convince Clark and Selina, who would in turn help convince the kids.
"Contemplating the benefits of implanting trackers in all your loved ones again?" Dick's voice was cold and firm, but as Bruce's head snapped up, the tone did not fit his appearance.
His eldest's hair was a tangled mess, his cheeks were flushed and eyes hazy, and his clothes were rumpled as if he had been in a fight or fell asleep in them. The smell was the next thing to hit, the stench of stale vodka and something dark and musty quickly filling the room, and Bruce clenched his jaw at the picture being painted.
"Where the hell were you?" He growled, grabbing Dick by the arm and dragging him away from the sitting room and a peacefully sleeping Alfred.
"Out," Dick bit out just as sharply, yanking his arm out of Bruce's grip, and from up close it was easier to see the bloodshot veins in his eyes, the sweat plastering half of his hair to his face. "What? I need your permission to get the hell out of your house now?"
"Yes," he retorted, forcing his fingers to flex and his arms to stay at his side. "After eight months of torture, you need to tell someone where you're going."
"Eight months of torture for you," Dick returned with a scoff and feigned nonchalance. "I walked out of there the best out of all of us and you know it."
"Best is a relative term here and you know that," Bruce replied, because Lee might have said there was a sliding scale of injuries, but no one escaped that hellhole unscathed.
"I know I spent eight months getting laid while my family was being beat to shit, starved, isolated, and electrocuted." And Dick was doing a good job at goading Bruce into a fight, and while he normally would just dismiss the efforts, it had been a long night and he had no patience left for his antics.
"Zatanna is okay with this?" Bruce said pointedly, gesturing to the state the younger man was in. Because if there was one thing he knew about the magician, it was that she was endlessly kind but pragmatic in a way that rivaled Lois. If she knew Dick had planned to get drunk at two in the morning, she would've called someone to keep an eye on him or gone with him.
Dick's retort was sharp, defensive, meaning that Bruce had hit just the nerve he had wanted to. "Where's Selina, Bruce?"
It was a low blow, but there was no other way the two of them knew how to fight and Bruce couldn't help the rising anger. The wound was still fresh. Coming back to the Manor and seeing a thin layer of dust on his and Selina's bed, Alfred telling him that he had closed the doors to the primary suite and it had been rarely opened, it had hurt more than he thought possible.
"Probably in her apartment in the Diamond District," he replied flippantly. She had fled the Watchtower after he had woken up and when he came back to the Manor...he hadn't realized how much of her had seeped into the place until her very presence was completely erased. "Like she was when we were gone."
"Oh my god, news flash!" Dick shouted, throwing his hands up int he air like he did when he thought Bruce was missing something crucial and was frustrated with him. "She didn't want to spend her days in a mausoleum of her house while she was missing and potentially grieving her damn husband!"
Sucking in a sharp breath at the last word—they had been so careful, no witnesses besides who they could wholeheartedly trust, no more public appearances—for all the world knew and cared, Selina Kyle had left Bruce Wayne at the altar and that was the last of their relationship. It was a little more complicated to explain to the caped community, but they all bought the story that she got cold feet, returning to her life of crime and crumbling under the pressure. Everyone was more than willing to believe that Bruce set too high expectations and was not emotionally available enough to deal with the complexities of a marriage.
"Selina backed out of the wedding," he repeated the rote line that he gave everyone. It was usually enough for some sympathetic looks, some half-hearted condolences or 'good riddance's,' but Dick just rolled his eyes.
"Oh, save me the bullshit, Bruce," he said nastily, condescendingly, like Bruce was an unruly teenager, "I saw the marriage certificate in the safe. Never filed, of course, but rubber-stamped by City Hall and everything! You two might not wear rings but don't tell me you don't love her or that she doesn't love you."
"She left," he replied. Because love wasn't enough to keep her in the safest place in all of Gotham when he wasn't there. Because she was more than capable of taking care of herself and Clark was surely keeping tabs on her, but knowing his house didn't even offer her comfort while he couldn't did make him question her commitment.
They'd had more than their share of fights, and growing up, those were always punctuated by long silences between them until Selina decided she needed something more than she was angry at him.
Her absences were much fewer and farther between once they grew up, so the fact that she hadn't returned yet spoke louder than words.
"Because you pushed her away!" Dick yelled again, his voice breaking and his face twisting harshly. He looked around the room like he had X-ray vision, blowing out a breath that smelled more like alcohol than the wine cellar. "Speaking of, where's Clark? Or Lois for that matter?" Bruce didn't even have the chance to reply that Lois was in Smallville like she had been for the past two weeks before Dick scoffed and shook his head. "You don't know how incredibly lucky you are, do you? You have three people who love you so goddamn much, they would do anything for you! No, screw that, they are in love with you. Your wife, your best friend, and Lois goddamn Lane!"
And Bruce really did not want to get into the intricacies of the arrangement between the four of them, and he felt the hardening of his expression the second Dick brought up Clark. Their dynamic was strange but being in love was stretching it. Even with Selina, at times it felt like they had just fallen into a marriage because they were in their late thirties and in the longest "good" stretch of their relationship since they were fifteen.
"And Zatanna isn't in love with you?" Bruce shot back, refusing to let Dick make this all about him. There was a girl waiting in an apartment somewhere in Gotham for her—if Alfred was correct—fiancé to come see her. "She doesn't want the best for you? While you go out drinking and sleeping around?"
Dick's entire face shuttered, and while he might be the most expressive of Bruce's children, that was just as much of a mask as Bruce's stoicism or Jason's anger or Tim's cold calculations. "We're taking a bit of a break," he said, the words automatic like reading from a script.
Bruce has heard that one before—Kory, Barbara, and now Zatanna. If he didn't know the dangers of loving someone in this life, he would be worried about Dick's seemingly chronic inability to keep up a romantic relationship. He's heard the rumors about his son for years, ever since "the team" and the Titans were the Teen Titans, but it wasn't any of his business. No hero or villain had shown up at Dick Grayson's or Nightwing's doorstep with a baby yet and that was really the best he could hope for at this point.
Zatanna was a great girl, witty and clever and playful, all things Dick needed in a relationship, but she was not who he would have expected, or even picked, for Dick in the long run. They were too similar in some ways, and Dick always needed a strong personality to keep him in line. And while Zatanna certainly was self-assured and no doormat, she was much less brash or confrontational than some of his other partners.
(The dark hair was also a curveball, albeit a superficial one.)
"Alfred told me she had found a ring." He tried to keep as much judgement out of his voice as possible, but he wasn't sure if he succeeded if the way Dick's face turned red was any indication.
"She had no right," he muttered under his breath, before turning his ire on Bruce. "Besides! Why do you care? You never liked her, not as much as Barbara, this should be great news for you! Your son is back on the market, here to make whatever connections necessary to further the mission."
"That was one time," Bruce retorted, still feeling the pinch of guilt that came with remembering how he had once offered Dick to go on a date with a potential investor's daughter to probe what her mother knew about Wayne Enterprises' funding of the Justice League. How was he supposed to know that Dick had just started seeing Zatanna if he was keeping it a secret?
"It doesn't matter!" Dick shouted with more pain and intensity than Bruce assumed he wanted. "It doesn't matter, okay? You deal with what happened by pushing away your loved ones, you can't be pissed with any of us if we do the same."
But that was the thing: he could.
Because Bruce knew he was emotionally stunted, that there was something wrong with him that kept him from truly feeling the happiness that was in his life. Every day in captivity, he thought of Selina's smirk, Clark's eyes, Lois' laugh...they were all he had. He wasn't sure if he was going to make it out to see them again, and he needed that last little bit of hope to keep himself going.
Now that he was back, it was like the visions he had of them were too perfect, or maybe they had always been perfect and now he was the one who didn't fit the mold.
Selina's mouth was creased in a worried frown or a watery smile from the second Bruce had opened his eyes. She'd clung to his hand and demanded he "never do that again, idiot" as the relief poured off of her in waves, none of her usual devil-may-care attitude to be found.
Clark's piercing blue eyes were the same unnatural shade, but there was a dull quality to them. They shone and twinkled in the light, but that light was only there when he wasn't looking in Bruce's direction, then his eyes were shadowed, haunted by eight months of fruitless searching.
Lois' choked sob was one of the first things he heard as he was fighting through the anesthesia after his surgery, the way she muffled her cries in her hand because she was stronger than Superman sometimes, but how she let herself feel it because he was supposed to be asleep.
But he had thought, or maybe hoped, that his kids would be better than him. That's what every parent wants, right? To see their children make their own mistakes, not just repeat history.
And when it came to romance, Dick was the only one of his kids who took that leap with both feet. It was admirable to watch.
Jason was too closed off, Cass too sheltered, Tim too busy, and Damian...well, he was too young, but even now, it was obvious he was struggling to make friends, too scared to be vulnerable or weak in front of others.
But not Dick.
Dick always had so much love to give, and he wasn't scared of looking like a fool. He loved his friends, he loved his brothers and his sister, he loved his team, he loved people they saved, and he was going to show that love. But it had gotten him into trouble more than once, and while he fell in love quickly and intensely, Bruce wasn't sure if he didn't fall out of love just as fast.
The rumors of cheating had swirled since his breakup with Kory back during the initial Teen Titans days, and the quick and immediate dissolution of his relationship with Barbara pointed in the same direction. (Jim and Lee certainly believed that he had been some kind of unfaithful to their daughter.)
Now it just looked like just another bad habit resurfacing, and while he could admit Zatanna wasn't his favorite of Dick's partners, it also wasn't his decision. But if she wasn't making him happy or if he felt like it was their time to break things off, he would support his son.
"Maybe a break is good for you," he said quietly, hoping that was the right thing to say. Dick's wide eyes locked with his, something dark and pleading there and gone before Bruce could register it. "It has been a traumatic eight months, we can't come back and expect everything to be the same as when we left. Just...focus on yourself. On the family."
Dick stayed silent for almost a full minute, his eyes turning glassy for the briefest of seconds before becoming a dull gray color. Shoulders slumped, his entire form deflated as if the wind had been knocked out of his sails, and he nodded once, almost to himself.
"I know you're worried about me, Bruce," he said, the words mechanical, and Bruce immediately knew he had said the wrong thing with no way to take it back. "But focus on the kids, okay? Damian's been having nightmares every night, Cass has retreated from the world, and Tim and Jason...none of them are handling it well, and they need you and me to step up for them, okay?"
And Bruce didn't like Dick lumping himself in with Bruce, because while he knew he leaned on Dick for a lot of things when it came to raising the others, he wasn't the parent. Bruce was, and it was his responsibility to look after all of his kids. "They need me to be there for them. And so do you."
Dick raised his eyebrows sarcastically, "Sure. I'll remember that the next time you need me to calm Dami down or get Jason to come back home."
"That's no—" Bruce started before biting off his words before they became too painful. It was so easy to forget that Dick wasn't like Clark or Selina, he couldn't just fight with him the way he wanted because he was technically his...parental figure. They were partners before they were anything resembling a family and that transition didn't stick most of the time. "I'm just saying, I don't need you to take on more than you can handle. Everyone is having a rough time of it, it's okay to take some time for yourself to...figure everything out."
"To get it out of my system, you mean."
Bruce was barely able to hide a wince because that was eerily close to what he had been thinking. But to hear it so plainly stated made it sound worse than what he meant, like he was judging Dick for how he was handling things.
With a scoff, Dick just smiled grimly, "Fuck you, Bruce. I'll see you in...two hours for breakfast."
Without another word, Dick stomped up the stairs with all the flair of a teenager being sent to their room without dessert. Bruce watched his retreating back—the way that he stumbled a couple times going up the stairs—before bringing a hand to his head and sighing deeply.
"Well, I think that went swimmingly, Master Bruce," Alfred quipped, seemingly materializing out of thin air by his elbow.
"I know," Bruce sighed, the late (early) hour finally getting to him, and he allowed Alfred to lead him back into the sitting room. It was easier to catch a couple minutes of shut eye here than limping back up the stairs to his bed. "He's just so...angry."
"Sounds like someone else I know," Alfred hummed, incredibly unsubtly. "But that anger stems from fear, you know it does. And his fear, and yours, does not need to control you. You do not need to be alone in it, refusing to help from those you are closest to."
"Him first," Bruce cracked a smile, going for a joke but Alfred was wholly unamused.
"I suggest you check your messages," the older man replied neutrally. "Your mobile has been buzzing for the past twenty minutes."
"Thanks, Alfred," Bruce nodded, the butler going back to the kitchen. He never did get to finish drinking his peppermint tea.
And, of course, checking his phone's messages only made the pit in his stomach expand, the worry eating at every cell in his body when he saw the words from Clark written there, the guilt that seeped from his pores thinking back to the harsh words he'd said to both Dick and Clark within the past few hours.
[Clark Kent] >>Finally found Dick's heartbeat and tracked him to a club in the Narrows. Cat's Meow but I'm fairly certain 'Lina has nothing to do with it.
[Clark Kent] >>His heartbeat is irregular. I can't tell if it's a panic response or...a more physical reaction to a more intimate something else that causes elevated heartbeats.
Bruce didn't know what it said about him that he had made an algorithm to ensure any deleted messages or words were retrieved when a message was sent to his phone. Or what it said that he felt some kind of dark relief that he hadn't pushed Clark away for good (not as he's certain he did with Selina, their message thread gathering dust), but he imagined it wasn't anything good. Not when the actual messages implied something horrible for his oldest son.
[Clark Kent] >>I made sure to track Dick all the way back to the manor. It took him longer than I would've expected, so make sure he's okay for me, please? He still owes Jon a motorcycle ride that Lois and I are adamantly trying to get out of by the way.
[Clark Kent] >>Anyway, I know you worry, I do too. We all do. Alfred, Gordon, Ma, Pa, everyone just wants the best for the six of you, so if you need space, I understand. I'm sorry for running out earlier, you can always call if you need me.
Bruce sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, feeling older than he was, wishing there was an easier way to handle...everything. Dick and his relationship issues, running off to a strip club in the middle of the night, Jason's disappearing act, Tim's self-imposed exile, Cass and Damian's obvious trauma responses.
It was difficult enough to keep them all safe when he was Batman—and even then he failed, Jason's Robin suit was a constant reminder of that fact—but as just Bruce...he had no chance.